Shrike's Heart (#4)

[idolpro]

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

Comments

Re: > START

[inspiteful]

[ Oh.









What if I turn around and try to leave because fuck this. ]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ You cannot. Perhaps its the enormity of this place—the infinite darkness of the hole, the cacophony of the whispers, the unsettling visages—faces? of the impossible, incomprehensibly large buildings you realize were what you saw, that surround this place in a ring.

The voices rise, and rise, and rise, and then—for a moment, there's silence, and then there's only one. A woman's, maybe.

Give your name. ]

Re: > START

[inspiteful]

-- What if I don't want to?

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ They repeat, now, other voices joining the chorus:

Give.

The pressure intensifies—like the crushing deep of the bottom of the ocean, where no light reaches. You could almost feel as if you'd been forced to your knees, but you're still frozen in place on the edge of the void. ]

Re: > START

[inspiteful]

[ This is bad! Why is it bad -- wait that's kind of obvious. Eclipse bites his lower lip, upset. ]


...Fine. Eclipse.

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ Your voice emerges, but the words are muffled, garbled, warped, and swallowed into the nothingness that surrounds you.

What was your name? You don't remember, anymore.

But then... ]